Sunday, February 16, 2014

Craigslist Killer Claims More Murders

SUNBURY, Pa. — I’ve only murdered bad people — dozens of them — accused Craigslist thrill killer Miranda Barbour said in a jailhouse interview Friday.
When I hit 22 , I stopped counting,” the teen terror said, claiming she began her killing spree as a 12-year-old runaway caught up in a Satanic cult in her home state of Alaska — and just kept on killing.
It was never random,” she said. “When I found out they were bad people, they don’t need to be here anymore.”
"It was never random" is passive.
Note the verb, "need" is not "needed"
We do not conclude deception on a single indication, but look at the larger picture.  The quotes here are sporadically placed in the AP article.  Note the strong pronoun use and past tense verbs in some sentences.  It is possible that she killed many, but is boasting more.  Is it possible that she killed more than she owns up to?  Lost count?  
Pennsylvania cops confirmed Saturday that they have been working with officials from other states and the FBI about her possible connection to other killings.
The petite 19-year-old brunette and her dishwasher husband, Elytte, 22, are in separate Pennsylvania jails, charged with capital murder after admitting to cops that they stabbed and strangled a man who had answered her online “companionship” ad.
The couple had been married for three weeks to the day, and they wanted the thrill of taking a life, police have said Elyette told them in confessing to the Nov. 11 slaying of Troy LaFerrara, 42, who suffered 20 stab wounds before being dumped outside a garage near Harrisburg.
“I kept the knife,” said Miranda, who has a nearly 2-year-old daughter by another man.
“I liked the knife, and it’s the same knife I used before.
In responding to Miranda’s Craigslist ad, LaFerrara, a married electrical engineer, agreed to meet her at the Susquehanna Valley Mall.
But when he climbed in beside her in her red Honda CRV, Elyette — who had been hiding under a blanket in the back seat — popped out to strangle LaFerrara with a cord. Miranda joined in with a knife she pulled from between the seats, cops said.
The couple went to a Harrisburg strip club after, cops said.
I remember everything,” Miranda said of LaFerrara’s death. “It is like watching a movie.
She said she agreed to have sex with LaFerrara for $100. As she drove him to nearby Sunbury, she actually planned to let him live, she said.
But, she recalled, “he said the wrong things.”
“I lied to him and told him I just turned 16,” she said.
“He told me that it was OK. If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go,” she said.
And then things got out of control. I can tell you he was not supposed to be stabbed. My husband was just supposed to strangle him.”
As to her other claimed victims, “I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them,” she said, adding most of the slayings happened in her native Alaska after she ran away from home and hooked up with a Satanist pimp named Forest.
When I became involved in Satanism, I knew I had something bad inside me, and I embraced it,” Miranda explained.
Asked the number of victims, she said, “Less than 100.
As to why she was not caught, she shrugged again.
Given the people I was involved with, it was easy to cover it up,” she said. “I know that I would do this again if I got out.”
Both have pleaded not guilty, and are seeking to be tried separately. Sunbury authorities are seeking the death penalty.

29 comments:

John Mc Gowan said...

“I kept THE knife,” said Miranda, who has a nearly 2-year-old daughter by another man.
“I liked THE knife, and it’s the same knife I used before.”

As you have pointed out Peter. There is a strong use of past tense and the possessive pronoun "I".

Although she doesn't introduse "THE" knife, and given the pronoun usage and past tense usage also. Am right believing that, the definite article here, is in the right place?.

Thanks.

Ivanna-Anna said...

“When I hit 22 , I stopped counting,” the teen terror said, claiming she ...

She is 19, he is 22. 22 year old is not a teen. It seems the news article is mixing who said what so the quotes should not be trusted.

As for the number of victims:
If she can't say how many people she killed, she is either boasting or has problems with math. She says “I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them.” She should do that: pin the points on a map and count them. She doesn't do it so it seems that she is boasting.

John Mc Gowan said...

Sorry i failed to add.

In other words. She HAS been using the same knife?.

Anonymous said...

Ivanna-Anna said...@ 9:25am
“When I hit 22 , I stopped counting,” the teen terror said, claiming she ...

She is saying when she hit 22 murder victims, she stopped counting, not when she turned 22 years of age.

Ivanna-Anna said...

Woops, thanks for pointing that out, Anon :)

Anonymous said...

You're welcome Ivanna-Anna, I had to read it twice too :)

I agree with you, if she can pin-point the locations, she can count her victims...

Maggie said...

^^^^Actually, if she hadn't been caught yet that would be important information!

Anonymous said...

I hope they let her live. she believed she was killing child predators. she has my sympathy.

Anonymous said...

*DEATH"not"dear".

Anonymous said...

her mistake, she changed her normal routine by one important factor, her new husband. otherwise she may have never been caught this time either.

Anonymous said...

“I feel it is time to get all of this out,” she said. “I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.”

Suspect: I joined satanic cult

Miranda said when she was 4, she was sexually molested by a relative.

Elizabeth Dean, Miranda’s mother, confirmed Saturday that her sister’s husband was later arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a minor and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

“It was bad,” Dean said. “I never let (her) stay anywhere except for my sister’s house, and I was devastated when I found out.”

Nine years later, Miranda joined a satanic cult in Alaska. Soon after, Miranda said, she had her first experience in murder.

Barbour said she went with the leader of the satanic cult to meet a man who owed the cult leader money.

“It was in an alley and he (the cult leader) shot him,” she said, declining to identify the cult leader.

“Then he said to me that it was my turn to shoot him. I hate guns. I don’t use guns. I couldn’t do it, so he came behind me and he took his hands and put them on top of mine and we pulled the trigger. And then from there I just continued to kill.”

While in the satanic cult, Miranda became pregnant. The cult did not want her to have the baby, so, she said, members tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and she had an “in-house abortion.”

However, her mother on Saturday said that when Miranda told her about the abortion, she took her daughter to a doctor who said there were no signs of an ended pregnancy.

Miranda said she spent the next three years in Alaska, continuing in the satanic cult and participating in several murders.

“I wasn’t always there (mentally),” she said, adding that she had begun to use drugs. “I knew something was bad inside me and the satanic beliefs brought it out. I embraced it.”

During those three years, Miranda said she became pregnant again.

“And I moved to North Carolina,” she said. “I wanted to start over and forget everything I did.”

She left Alaska as a high-ranking official in the satanic world, leaving the father of her second pregnancy, a man named Forest, the No. 2 leader in their cult, who was murdered.

Maggie said...

To answer Peter's question is she lying or exaggerating, etc. It seems to me like there are quite a few indicators of deception even where she is talking about only killing "bad" people. Peter had underlined the present tense "need" in her statement "they don't need to be here" when talking about "bad people". It sounds like there is a lot of fabrication even about her targeting "bad" people. I think she's lying about most of it.

Anonymous said...

gotta say I have no bad feelings towards her. I'm sure she's telling the truth and I'm compelled to respect her for it. I hope she gets life in prison and not the death penalty.

Theresa said...

Respect her why? Because she killed people she perceived as bad? She doesn't list why they were bad, aside from her most recent victim, because he groped her after she claimed she was 16. I don't believe for a second that she would have let him live if he had changed his mind! They had already attempted to kill other ransom men from Craigslist and failed. Not all of her victims were child predators. I have no respect for her, even if the Mister from CL was her only victim and she only killed him because he was cool with her claiming she was 16. She lured him there for the sole purpose of killing him.

Rose said...

There are no murderous Satanic cults in Alaska. In fact, no one has ever found proof of single murderous Satanic cult anywhere in the world. I am from Alaska, so believe you me when I tell all of you that we would notice if 22 people just suddenly went missing.

This woman is lying about that part, let's see what else she is lying about.

Rose said...

There are no murderous Satanic cults in Alaska. In fact, no one has ever found proof of single murderous Satanic cult anywhere in the world. I am from Alaska, so believe you me when I tell all of you that we would notice if 22 people just suddenly went missing.

This woman is lying about that part, let's see what else she is lying about.

Anonymous said...

"They had already attempted to kill other random men from Craigslist and failed."
if so, perhaps those people were deemed to be good, so it wasn't a fail.
i believe her for two reasons, abused children grow up being batman. and strangers as victims, who were more than likely secretly meeting her, leaves LE nothing to go on.
they will pick out people who deserve it, leaves them no guilt and they feel they are doing the world a favor so they feel good about themselves, heroes.

Anonymous said...

lmao rose, google "satanic cults alaska"
and she didnt say all 22 victims were in alaska, besides it was over a 6 year period.

Anonymous said...

Alaskan satanic cults. LOL. Barbour missed the "satanic panic" by about 20 years. Geraldo Rivera, please pick up the nearest white courtesy telephone...

Rose said...

It has never been proved anywhere in the world that a Satanic cult has murdered people. It is just something that the media latched on to because it freaked people out. Look, about 20% of the US population are evangelical Christians who honestly believe in goofy stuff like the devil. These people can be easily convinced that there are devil worshipers out there who murder ritualistically in the name of Satan. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that people actually believe it. Never been a single PROVEN case of Satanic cult murders. It is totally invented.

Anonymous said...

Keep in mind, Henry Lee Lucas claimed he killed dozens and dozens of people, as many as a few hundred. His motive? He thought as long as the cops were searching for the victims, getting the information from him, he would be spared the death penalty. It did seem to work for quite a while. But eventually, the cops tired of the false information and lack of bodies.


This girl knows she is going away for a long, long time. The prosecutor is already talking death penalty. All of this bragging may just be her way of attempting to do the same thing Henry Lee tried. Plus, her stature in the prison community would be greatly elevated.

Anonymous said...

I don't believe everything she says - particularly with regard to the numnber of people she's suppposedly killed. What I do believe is that she is a victim of pre-verbal sexual abuse (sexual abuse prior to the age of 5). Because of that abuse, I would suspect that she has a serious personality disorder(s) and has a history of telling fantastic stories and lies with the expectation that others believe her without question. Being believed is so very important to her, even in spite of any evidence to the contrary. She made an interesting statement: "I feel it is time to get all this out. I don't care if people believe me. I just want to get it out." She says she doesn't care if she is believed, but that likely means that she really does care. She wants to be believed. My opinion is that she's lying and that she's spent too much of her spare time watching dark and violent movies or reading the same kinds of novels. She's no 22-time (or more) serial killer.

skeptic said...

I just can't with the whole Satanic cult story (though verbatim language was elided into exposition):

Cults are hard to rein in ("three can keep a secret if two of them are dead"), even if they're all bound in a conspiracy of "silence", the chances of discovery increase with the number of members and all the people they interact with.

Like men with the first name "Forest" abound, even in Alaska (I've never seen any one with that name in print even, unless we count DeForest Kelley). She adds details as lavishly as Casey Anthony. Wouldn't you have to kill minimum one person a month? Where does she find them when it's not Craiglist ads? "Forest"'s not just a boring old garden variety Alaska Satanist either, he's a "Satanist pimp", LOL. Sounds like something Dario Argento or Ira Levin would come up with. How many male accomplices has she had (she'd need one, starting at age 12)? Were they all slain with knives? Even the victim wasn't done in with her knife, she needed the husband to subdue with a garrotte.

Doesn't pass the sniff test, IMO. I just read these words, and I picture someone like my best friend in middle school, who would weave the most fantastical stories, and be so pleased with herself and her skill that she never notice when she'd hit the "Oh, come ON!" cliff with her listeners.

Skeptical said...

I think this woman has killed before. I also think she has developed the ability to weave truth and fiction together into her account that it will take a skilled interviewer to discern what is the truth.

Juliette said...

Sunbury police Chief Steve Mazzeo has said investigators are aware of Miranda Barbour’s claims about killings in other states and were contacting police in those jurisdictions.

Neither Pennsylvania state police nor the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is involved in the investigation, spokesmen said Tuesday.

North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation “has been in contact with Pennsylvania authorities about this case” and remains in contact “to determine if there is any credible information related to any unsolved homicide in North Carolina,” spokeswoman Noelle Talley said.

In Alaska, state troopers said they were “not aware of any information, beyond Barbour’s comments quoted in the press, or evidence that would implicate Barbour with a homicide committed in Alaska.”

http://thetrialdivas.com/2014/02/19/police-cant-verify-pa-wifes-killing-claims/

Anonymous said...

i get the impreszion she just killed johns who thought they were sleeping with underage girl. shes like dateline with a knife. i respect her cause every other killer i read about is a pervert and she was trying to kill perverts. i mean shes not going anywhere shes gonna get prison for life if not worse. at least shes not wasting anybodys time shes telling her crimes. lots of people hold out and dont help the courts or cops etc. i dont condone what she did im sure one glimps of the reality of it would repel me. but say she was a character in a movie - id totslly root for her.

Anonymous said...

exactly what are the indicators if deception in her language? i get it that you dont feel like trusting a killer and also find her story outragous. but exavtly what about how she speaks makes you think she is being dishonest here and now?

Ken said...

Barbour claims to be a satanist of the of the Anton LaVey church of satan variety.
She claims to have stopped counting victims at "22."
It is, surely, not a coincidence that in LaVey's authorized biography, "The Secret Life of a satanist" by Blanche Barton, it states the following about LaVey, "He swears that each time he reads a new killing spree, his only reaction is, 'What, 22 people? Is that all?'"
Also, in the satanic bible, LaVey wrote a chapter titled, "On the Choice of a Human Sacrifice" which gives ample excuse for satanic ritual murders.
Lastly, there are numerological reasons for the "22" designation. Search online for "Satanic crime - murder by numbers, the Barbours and the number 1 (and 11)"

Ken said...

Barbour claims to be a satanist of the of the Anton LaVey church of satan variety.
She claims to have stopped counting victims at "22."
It is, surely, not a coincidence that in LaVey's authorized biography, "The Secret Life of a satanist" by Blanche Barton, it states the following about LaVey, "He swears that each time he reads a new killing spree, his only reaction is, 'What, 22 people? Is that all?'"
Also, in the satanic bible, LaVey wrote a chapter titled, "On the Choice of a Human Sacrifice" which gives ample excuse for satanic ritual murders.
Lastly, there are numerological reasons for the "22" designation. Search online for "Satanic crime - murder by numbers, the Barbours and the number 1 (and 11)"